


Sound Off

by supermagpie



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, No one will get cheated on in this story cross my heart, OT3, Threesome - F/F/M, early chapters more gen, later chapters more mature, no beta we die like 1/3rd of this ship in canon, rating might go up we'll see how the plot comes together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28819863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supermagpie/pseuds/supermagpie
Summary: After Tayuya survives her encounter with Shikamaru and Temari they remain key figures in her life... (Eventual OT3)
Relationships: Nara Shikamaru/Tayuya, Nara Shikamaru/Temari, Nara Shikamaru/Temari/Tayuya, Tayuya/Temari (Naruto)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	1. Shikamaru

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru doesn’t want to feel sorry for her.
> 
> He wants to be angry with her; pissed about having to be rescued from her, furious about being out-strategized by her. He wants to dump all the grief and guilt of seeing the team he was responsible for torn to pieces at her feet...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Set Immediately after the Sasuke Retrieval Mission Arc - Shikamaru is 13, Tayuya is 14, age-appropriate establishing h/c now, shipping later]

Shikamaru doesn’t want to feel sorry for her.

He wants to be angry with her; pissed about having to be rescued from her, furious about being out-strategized by her. He wants to dump all the grief and guilt of seeing the team he was responsible for torn to pieces at her feet. He is looking forward, in fact, to debriefing her for exactly that reason and requests the task from the Hokage the moment he is cleared for non-combat duty. 

Tsunade gives him a long wary look over her desk as if she is assessing if she can truly trust him to the task, before giving a heavy sigh at her scheduling book and nodding.

Maybe she lets him do it because she already knows what he quickly finds out...

-

Between her foul mouth and her cocky attitude, Shikamaru had thought of her as a grown woman, but up close the sound kunoichi is clearly barely older than he is. 

He had prepared himself to see the monster he came up against in the forest, but instead, he stands over a skinny fourteen-year-old, bearing the ill-defined muscle of the underfed and overworked, panting with the effort of breathing beneath her oxygen mask. 

Her closed eyes are sunken, red hair making her bloodless lips and cheeks all the starker. And the lower half of her body - shattered by the trees that had come down around her - is nothing short of arresting to look at. Both her legs are black and blue beneath the gaps in her dressings, tractioned to the rig at the foot of the bed by a half-dozen chakra strings apiece. A massive paper seal is plastered around her hips to stabilize the flow of blood and energy through her shattered pelvis, the kind of high scale reconstructive interventions Shikamaru has only read about in textbooks. It makes him feel a little queasy if he thinks about it too hard.

It makes sense, of course, to save her life if they can. She surely knows more about Orochimaru and his plans and abilities than they could ever find out by other means, for starters, and her skills as a kunoichi would be foolish to toss aside as well. Her squad had wielded the kind of Jutsu usually pulled off by far older shinobi. 

And frankly, it was unexpectedly tenacious of her to still be _breathing_ after such grave injuries. It would be unfair not to give her the chance to keep going after she had hung on for long enough on her own to be recovered. Her teammates certainly hadn't had that staying power. He’s a bit impressed despite himself.

Shikamaru swallows, frowning as he comes around to the side of the bed. He roughly pulls a chair from the corner, digging deep to try to find the anger that had been burning in his gut when he was still standing in the hall, but she looks too pathetic for him to muster much more than some irritation. The chair legs scrape and thump on the floor but she doesn’t so much as flinch.

Well, she’s certainly too deep under for any kind of interrogation then. So much for getting this over and done with.

He sighs, sinking onto the seat and folding forward to rub at the nape of his neck, trying to knead away the headache that hasn’t let up for the last forty damn hours since they made it back to the village. Maybe he should just go home and get some sleep. He hadn’t been able to turn his mind off last night but maybe by now he’ll be weary enough to just pass out... 

But the nursing rounds are soon, and maybe she’ll become awake enough to talk when they check her over.

So he watches her sleep, watches her chest rise and fall, her mask filling with condensation with every laboured puff. The thought that this is just how Chouji looked when Shikamaru saw him a day ago comes unbidden to his mind and turns his stomach over.

He doesn’t _want_ to feel sorry for her, but it’s difficult to look at the state of her and feel anything else. 

He doesn’t envy her, certainly. It’s difficult to imagine how jarring it will be for her when she wakes, gravely injured and suddenly living on the good graces of an enemy village. He thinks of Chouji’s mother sitting stalwart at his bedside and wonders if she has a family who would be with her if they could...

The change of shift comes and goes a little while later. They check her over, reinforce the barriers on her body, but she stays limp and unresponsive despite all the noise and attention. Shikamaru sighs, and lets the medic-nin usher him out without complaint. 

Maybe she’ll be fit to tell him something tomorrow. 

-

When he returns to the hospital the following morning - still sleepless but at least having laid down for a number of hours - Shikamaru feels a wave of relief when he finds that Chouji is now awake. His best friend is too skinny and clearly not out of the woods yet, but he is already begging for something better than the hospital food, which is the first thing that has made Shikamaru feel that he will be okay.

He is only allowed to see Chouji for a few hours but the short time spent with him makes Shikamaru feel ten tons lighter. Checking around to see that Neji, Kiba and Akamaru are all similarly on an upswing takes off another ten. He manages a whole meal at lunch for the first time in days.

It catches him off guard, just how much looking in on the sound kunoichi again that afternoon knocks him down from the high.

He can hear how much worse she is breathing the moment he opens the door and despite himself, his stomach lurches. He comes to the side of her bed, teeth clenching as he takes in her visible discomfort. She is sweaty and shivering, the call button she is too unconscious to use lying just beside her hand on the mattress

The curse mark he had only seen from a distance before is burning brightly on her pale skin, activating and deactivating as her obvious fever spikes and falls. The molten lines of the pattern advance and recede around the edges of her now-flushed face like a lapping tide. 

Her breathing pitches higher each time the power surges as if it is squeezing the shallow breaths she is taking right out of her. 

Three days ago he would have given almost anything for her to make that strangled sound with his shadow hand gripping around her neck, but today Shikamaru can only tolerate the horrible noise of it twice before he punches the button to summon someone from the nursing station.

Like lightning, as if she were waiting for it, her shaking fingers seize his hand and squeeze.

Shikamaru startles, frozen, his index finger still on the call button. She doesn't look at him or otherwise acknowledge his presence, clearly not fully conscious, but she grips his hand harder, rasping painfully again as the mark flares up her neck. Instinctively he grips back.

A medic-nin responds a few terrible wheezes later. Although she is clearly busy and a bit frazzled by the unexpected summons she still clicks her tongue in concern at her patient’s distressed state and swiftly sorts out an extra dose of painkillers, politely saying nothing about Shikamaru’s hand being anchored to the unconscious girl the whole time. He thinks of pulling away, embarrassed, but her grip is so… desperate. The medic departs once she’s satisfied with the arrangement of the IV, telling him to ring again if the patient doesn’t seem to improve any.

The medicine takes some of the heat out of her face and makes her wheezing less pronounced. The mark still flares and fades but more slowly, and then not at all. Her breathing levels out and finally she sighs, as if drifting to sleep, and her hand relaxes around his.

Shikamaru realizes once she has calmed that he has sat with her for almost an hour, paralyzed by a single needy touch. He curses softly to himself as he finally pulls his hand back, flexing the feeling back into his fingers. This is what he gets for being raised by his mother, badgered into chivalrous manners since he was small. Just like his father he’s now manifested a total inability to deny a woman a favour, even an unconscious and deadly one.

He sighs heavily, leaning back in his chair and tipping his face to the ceiling, staring with tired eyes at the tube light glowing above him and feeling his exhaustion in his bones. He should go home and sleep himself, but there’s a strange knot in the pit of his stomach as he thinks of leaving, wondering if her fever and pain will return once he’s left her be.  
  
Before he slips out the door he puts the call button firmly in her palm and closes her fingers gently around it, hopeful that if she grips it the way she did his hand it will work as intended.

-

Shikamaru sleeps, at last, that night, but not well. 

For the first half of the night, he could be more accurately considered unconscious - he hits the mattress and promptly blacks out for five hours.

But in the still-dark morning, he wakes, desperately thirsty, and by the time he has made it to the kitchen and back for water, his mind has wandered too far for him to get back to sleep despite the burning weariness in his body. 

He thinks of the sound kunoichi again, wonders if she is resting any better, and then there he goes, down the rabbit hole of their fight, reexamining his every move and hers, puzzling out the logistics of how she must have survived her injuries, how badly he really might have fared if it hadn’t been for...

He wants to just shut his brain off but can only stare in exhaustion across his pillow at the hand that she had held with such tenacity, time passing in a syrupy haze until somehow sunlight is pouring in his window again.

Maybe he'll visit her in the morning this time.

-

Damn it all, she probably slept better than he did, from the look of her, Shikamaru thinks with jealous irritation. They've traded out her mask for a thin tube beneath her nose at some point in the night, and she looks rather less lifeless than when he had left her the afternoon before. Her fever must have stayed broken at least.

He pulls the chair over from the corner in the same noisy way he has done twice before but this time he is startled to find hazy amber eyes peering up at him when he sits down. 

She isn’t entirely present; confusion knits her brow and she squints at him for a long second, trying hard to recognize his face before her eyes lose focus and her lashes flutter down again.

“Hey...” he says, reaching forward to carefully touch her hand, his voice soft with surprise and caution. “Can you hear me?”

Her eyes stay closed but she squeezes his offered fingers in acknowledgement.

“Do you know where you are?”

She licks her dry lips to little effect and makes a ‘nuh-uh’ sort of noise, giving an almost imperceptible head shake. 

Shikamaru slides his chair closer, hoping to hear her better, and her eyes crack back open, pinning him with that puzzled gaze again.

"You're in a hospital in Konoha. You’ve got a lot of barriers on you so don't try to move alright?"

Her eyes pop wide at that, clarity seeming to flood over her as his face finally registers somewhere in her cloudy memory. Her breath sharpens with alarm and her hand goes slack in his, jerking away as if his touch were hot. Shikamaru can’t help but feel vaguely insulted by it after how she practically clung to him in her sleep the day before and he sits back with a huff. 

“Relax, I’m here to talk to you not finish you off,” he says tersely, crossing his arms over his chest. “If we wanted you dead we’d have just left you in the forest. You’ve been unconscious a couple of days already.”

Her eyes dart around the room to confirm his statements, anger descending over her horror like a shield. She snaps her head back toward him and tries to say something to him - he’s pretty sure a ‘fuck’ is involved - but all that comes out is a rasp of breath and a cough that shakes her whole body, making her cringe with pain.  
  
Shikamaru rolls his eyes and rises from his chair, fetching a glass of water from the small sink and bringing it back to her bedside. It’s less trouble to do it himself, the staff are busy, and she’s not going to get talking otherwise. (He can’t stand listening to her struggle for breath, either, but that’s beside the point...) He slips a hand behind her head to nudge her upward, pressing the rim of the glass to her lips. 

She looks at him with alarm at first, then utter surprise, but she is still too weak to lift her arms completely and clearly thirst takes over when the water touches her mouth. She takes one cautious mouthful, then another headier one, and seconds later he’s cautioning her to slow down.

“Not so fast, do you want a stomach ache too? Jeeze.” he scolds, but he doesn’t move the cup until she’s drained it. The effort of drinking has put some colour in her face at least. He lets her settle back to the pillow, sets the cup on the side table and retakes his seat.

She makes a first real assessment of her condition as he sits down again, alarmed by the extent to which her body has been damaged judging by her furrowed brow and her sharp inhale. But she clamps her jaw shut hard the moment that her lip trembles, clearly determined to give no satisfaction to anyone who wants to see her suffer or despair.

“Let’s start over, yeah?" He says when she looks back to him. "I’m Nara Shikamaru, and you are…” he tips his hand toward her to prompt an answer.

She seems to think hard about whether to give one, and her eyes flicker to the empty cup and back before she lifts her chin and sets her jaw proudly, hoarse but understandable.

“...Tayuya of the Sound.”

“Okay. Good start.” Shikamaru nods, leaning forward to place his hands on his knees. “You’re lucky to be alive you know.”

“I would have gutted you like an eel if it hadn’t been for that bitch with the fan,” Tayuya says with a sneer and Shikamaru gives her a grumbling look of acquiescence.

"At least your memory is intact then...” he mutters. The reminder smarts more than a bit, but he isn’t about to let her play mind games with him about it. Let her be proud of her near-win if she likes. He might have failed on a larger scale but between the two of them, he’s not the one with his legs in traction.

“Anyway, you’ve been here almost four days now. You’re on some pretty serious painkillers already, I imagine, but if you need more or anything else there’s a button.” He points at where it has been left beside her hand. “This is a combat hospital, the nurses and doctors here aren't civilians, so don’t try anything dumb. And don’t be nasty to them either, they've done nothing to you but work their asses off to save your life."

Tayuya scoffs, golden-brown gaze burning with fury as she stares back at him. She seems almost affronted by the suggestion that she should be grateful. 

“So, what?" she snorts. "Now I’m going to tell you everything I know just because you were too stupid to kill me when you had the chance? I would never betray Lord Orochimaru so easily.”

“He’s that great, is he? Attacking villages and kidnapping kids to steal their bodies? Roaming around accumulating power for his own sake?” Shikamaru says derisively.

“He offered your friend power in exchange for his fealty. That’s not kidnapping, it’s a fair trade.” Tayuya says, vehement despite her voice growing hoarse. “To gain anything in this world you have to be willing to sacrifice something, that’s the way of things, and Lord Orochimaru made him a better offer than your pathetic village could. No need to be bitter about it.”

“So, nothing to tell me then?” Shikamaru clarifies, sighing as he gets up from his chair.

She looks back at him with pursed lips, stubbornly silent.

“Alright then, Tayuya of the Sound. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The bafflement that comes over her face is more than a bit satisfying and Shikamaru smirks to himself when he turns his back to put the chair in the corner again.

“...That’s actually it?” she asks with a rough laugh as his hand is on the door. He shrugs as he turns toward her again.

“Look, you don’t want to talk and you’re probably not going to be awake for long when you’re still this injured,” he says with a bored look. “Why waste your time and mine when I could be doing something fun and you could be resting? When you’re ready and you realise that it’s your best option, you’ll tell me what my superiors want to know. There’s no sense rushing things.”

She makes a face like he’s shoved a lemon in her mouth at the suggestion that she will see sense. Shikamaru rolls his eyes.

“Yeah yeah, Orochimaru and loyalty and all that. Just get some rest for now alright?”

He has one foot out the door when he hears her quiet - “Wait.”

"Mmm?"

“Do _I_ get to ask any questions?”

Shikamaru raises a brow at her before nodding slowly, bracing himself for a scathing remark or a nasty joke seeing as how she's certainly set him up for one. Instead, her brow knits again and her throat works in a hard swallow.  
  
“My teammates?”

Shikamaru's shoulders drop at the hopeful note in her voice. He shakes his head. 

“It’s just you left.”

She looks swiftly away, but he doesn’t miss the flash of anguish on her face. Her whole body tenses as she stares stalwartly at the far wall, jaw working like she is grinding her teeth.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, instinctively, and she flinches like he’s dealt her a physical blow.

“Just get the fuck out if you're going,” Tayuya snaps, her voice strained, and Shikamaru is glad to.

He absolutely hates it when women cry.

-

He sleeps that night, but he dreams about her; about hearing her flute song lilting through the woods and hoarse sobbing echoing after.  
  
  



	2. Tayuya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night, as she lies awake in the low light of her bed lamp, Tayuya realizes that she is looking forward to Shikamaru’s visit tomorrow...
> 
> Fuck. He’s getting to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Set Immediately after Pt 1 - Shikamaru is 13, Tayuya is 14, age-appropriate establishing stuff now, adult shipping later]

Six days into this nightmare and Tayuya thinks she might rather have died in the forest. It would be better than being stranded in this bed, visited daily by the ponytailed spectre of her failures.

Nara Shikamaru was annoying and upsettingly challenging as an opponent, but it turns out he’s even more irritating in the role of her unwanted benefactor.

He’s gotten himself assigned to interrogate her, apparently, a job he’s piss poor at to be generous about it. 

He comes to see her once a day and spends an hour or two just … being there not really doing anything. It’s like he thinks he can wear her down through osmosis. 

He asks her questions about Orochimaru, herself, the Otogakure forces in general, tries to tell her that if she chooses to betray her brethren Konoha will find someplace to let her live out her bitter days. He only shrugs at her varyingly vile and joking answers. He’s apparently convinced she will come around to his thinking if he just dawdles and repeats himself long enough. 

He’s clearly too soft-hearted to really put her feet to the irons for information either, despite the plain advantage her injuries should give him. He’d been far more ruthless on the battlefield but here, maybe because the power imbalance is so stark, any killer instinct he had seems thoroughly blunted. 

The staff handle her with caution - they don’t turn their backs at least - but they are likewise infuriatingly nice and amicable. They make her surprisingly comfortable considering she does her level best not to communicate much, keeping her topped up on food, drink and pain medicine without being asked. (One too-cheerful medic-nin smiles at her while he tells her that he’s long-accustomed to reading the proud types who won’t admit to anything.)

They all seem to genuinely be intent on her recovery for whatever reason and not just keeping her placid. They test her breathing and all her upper joints, trying to make her participate in some degree of physical reconditioning. They slowly leverage her bed higher over a couple of days until she can lean forward a bit and actually be sitting up under her own power instead of laid flat like a flipped crab, which she has to admit to appreciating a great deal.

Its psychological warfare is what it is. They’re trying to make her feel indebted so she’ll give up what she knows of the man who has given her everything else of worth in her life. It’s not going to work, but it’s still exhausting examining every interaction from an angle of resistance. 

The boredom of having nothing to distract herself with doesn’t help. Her fingers twitch for her flute. She whistles and hums a great deal once her throat is less raw, feeling out her effective range, which is how she discovers the trained chakra-devouring insects they've concealed at the edges of the room to dampen any genjutsu effects she could muster. Bastards.

Tayuya desperately wishes she knew better what was expected of her. Any discussion of capture during her training had involved escape and regrouping with her team. They hadn’t covered what to do if you were _this_ severely incapacitated and outnumbered but allowed to live.

She might remember enough of the village from their assault back in the spring to orient herself if she could make it outside, but the distance between her room and some kind of exit from the hospital is a mystery she has no way of solving alone. She’s on an upper floor with nothing to land on beneath her single window, so that’s out as a quick exit. One long-distance fall was enough. 

Even if she made a break for it through the halls too much could go wrong. She can’t fight if she’s caught, she can’t even stand for fuck’s sake, and in a hospital, its safe to assume everyone has a syringe of sedatives easy at hand. If she’s supposed to get out of here on her own she really doesn’t know how she’s meant to manage it...

She had briefly held out hope that Shikamaru had lied about her teammates’ fate, that they might appear to free her themselves, but deep in her gut, she had known from the start that he had told her the truth. His answer had been too sincere - like everything else about him - and the empty echo where she had once been able to sense her connection to her brothers-in-arms had only confirmed his words. The loss is searing, but hard to process when she can do nothing to mourn or remember them...

But Lord Orochimaru _must_ know that _she’s_ alive. Her curse mark flares now and again like a burning ember on the back of her neck, being prodded from the other side of their bond, so perhaps he is trying to pin down her location and condition. All she can do for the moment is save her strength for a message or an extraction.

Maybe he will simply have to wait for her to heal more before he can bring her home...

-

When Shikamaru shows up on day seven at the time she has come to expect (just after lunch, when he’s done with visiting his comrades in other wings of the hospital) he is carrying a folded board and a pouch of tiles under his arm. Tayuya raises a brow at him, tilting her head curiously at the new addition to the routine.

“I assume you’re still not talking,” he says, pulling over his chair in his usual way. “But you _are_ sitting up now so I thought we could try something else for today.”

He sets the game on the bed tray that’s been swung over her lap.

“Shogi?”

“Do you know how to play?”

Oh, she really shouldn’t take such obvious bait, but the urge to rub something in his face is just too much to resist.

“It’s been a while,” She demures, looking at the board with a cautious expression. “But I remember the rules. There's nothing else to do so if you’re THAT bored I’ll play you a game.”

He sets the pieces up between them and settles in and Tayuya proceeds to absolutely demolish him. 

Twice. 

He’s not a bad player, actually, he's just predictable as fuck and clearly not used to her tactics. He does better at defending against her on the second try but she still absolutely lays him out, which puts a look of confused anger on his face that she savours. It’s almost cute the way he sputters and huffs and mutters how this or that move she makes is ‘troublesome’.

“I thought you said you didn’t play much.” He grumbles, as he sets the pieces up for the third time, clearly not good at losing.

“I said it had been a while, not that I wasn’t going to wipe the board with you, idiot,” she responds with a laugh, and it’s the first time she feels a little bit happy since waking up.

“Gotten a lot of practice, have you?”

“I’ve gotten enough.” She shrugs. “You play like an old man.”

He’s clearly annoyed about her assessment but being pissed doesn’t help him play any better. After a third defeat, he’s thoroughly fed up and collects the game in a poorly disguised huff, making excuses about his other duties.

“If you’re going to keep coming around, can you get me something?” Tayuya asks as he folds the board shut again. He’ll likely say no, he’s not a total fool, and she's under no illusion that anything he brings her would actually be hers to keep, but he _is_ naively kind and maybe that will get her somewhere.

“Maybe,” he says cautiously, tucking the game under his arm. “Like what?”

“That Suna bitch broke my flute. I need another one.”

Shikamaru laughs loudly at that, head tossed back like the idea genuinely tickles him.

“So you can do your genjutsu on us all?” He smirks. “I'm not stupid.”

“Sure you are,” Tayuya says with a derisive huff. “You think I can't do genjutsu without an instrument, first of all.” 

She folds her hands in front of her mouth and warbles a bird call, starting low, then quickly darting to a high pitch that makes him flinch a little. "I can focus my chakra through ANY sound, moron. Which means I also know I'm being monitored by those creepy little beetles, because _you_ might be dumb but your bosses sure aren't."

“…Ah so you did notice those,” Shikamaru responds, frowning at her and rubbing the back of his neck like he’s been caught out. “Still. I should provide you with an instrument that's as good as handing you a weapon because...?” 

He gestures for her to elaborate and Tayuya feels frustration with his unconcerned attitude bubbling to the surface. Of course he doesn’t give a fuck, HE gets to leave this damn room whenever he likes!

“Shit, I don’t know!” She snarls. “Maybe because my legs don't work and you have me outnumbered an entire fucking village to one? Because you have about forty other advantages over me that you're too goddamn spineless to use, so what difference will it make to give me _one_ ? Also, I actually don't want to recover this much only to die from fucking _boredom!_ ”

Shikamaru looks back at her in a way she’s never seen before - surprised, on the edge of amusement - and Tayuya feels heat flare across her face. 

She’s never once felt embarrassed over losing her temper, people that raise her ire tend to deserve it, but the impotence of being unable to threaten him properly even as she’s spitting in his face stings. Silence has really been her only weapon against him so far, and she’s just given it up in a rage, essentially begging by arguing for her own weakness. It all tastes bad in her mouth. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Shikamaru says, his smirking look quickly replaced by an acknowledging nod. “Just get some rest, yeah?”

“Not like there’s anything else to do.” She grumbles, flopping back onto the elevated bed with a huff and staring up at the beams of light stretched across the ceiling from her window. 

“I’ll see what I can do about that too,” Shikamaru says from the doorway. 

Tayuya lifts her head to look at him again, trying to catch his expression, but he has already slipped away.

-

Tayuya lies awake in the dark more often than she’d like.  
  
The pain drugs are constant (thank fuck) but they make her weary and make sure that she sleeps too much in the daytime to stay under for very long at night. She turns on the lamp right away now that she can reach it without help, levering herself up to sitting and rubbing at her face.

In the absence of light, the sensations here are just too much like those endless-feeling hours in the vessel.

The traction keeps her rigidly in place still and her legs feel like pins and needles, there but not quite there. Add in the dark and the silence and it brings her right back to that crucible; suspended in darkness by forces she couldn't control, her body wracked with intermittent waves of agony, weaving somewhere between life and death and unsure which side she would emerge on.

A singular focus on the strength that was within her grasp had pulled her through that pain.

 _"It will hurt."_ Lord Orochimaru had warned her as he had tipped his palm to her lips and poured that deceptively tiny red pill onto her tongue. _"It is meant to hurt. It is a test of your will. Think of it as picking up a hot blade. If you have the strength to take the weapon from the forge it may burn you, but it will become part of you. It will give you a power that can never be taken from you as long as you live."_

But power is only good for certain things.

It is painfully clear here and now that her enhanced body still has hard limits that she has barely survived crashing into. Her strength isn't helping her heal faster, or endure psychological games any better, or making her grief and loneliness hurt even a bit less…

Tayuya pulls her hair forward over her shoulder and weaves a few strands, then a few more, humming to herself as she works her long locks into thin strips of braid. It's the oldest thing that she knows how to do to help her sleep. It was more effective long ago when someone else had done the humming and the braiding, but it still has a little power to calm her, even if she has to do it for herself now. It puts her mind elsewhere at the least, back to someplace calm.

It busies her fingers until they are weary, and the tune busies her mind until it is tired again too. Tayuya has never dreamed much and for that, especially now, she is grateful.

-

On day eight Shikamaru shows up again, with the game, as well as a notebook and some pencils. He sets all three on the tray table and Tayuya can't help but smirk.

"Is this for my confession?" She asks and he shrugs. 

"Confessions, strategies, any maps to hideouts you might like to draw...” he drawls, laying out the shogi pieces. “If you can make a flute out of paper go for it.”

“Ha you’re funny,” Tayuya says flatly. The cover isn’t really her style, a soft blue with a little bunny curled sleeping in the corner, but it will be something to do besides stare at the walls and hum when he’s gone. Maybe she’ll turn the rabbit into something cool…

“Rematch?” Shikamaru asks as he pulls over his chair, and she tucks the notebook down along the side of the bed for later. It’s not an instrument but she’ll take it.

“You’re eager to lose,” she says with a click of her tongue, holding out her fist to throw rock-paper-scissors for the first-move. He’d just handed it to her the day before, but she doubts he’ll be so dumb again. 

He isn’t, and he wins the opening volley, settling in across from her with a far more serious look than he had had the day before. His head is bowed to focus on the board, hands propped together in his lap, palms facing and the tips of his fingers touching as if in meditation. He plays differently than the day before too, with a more aggressive approach from the outset that smacks of reaction to her own, but it works. They are keeping pace in points this time.

“I should have known you’d be good at this game.” He mutters when he promotes her third piece and Tayuya looks across at him with amusement and vague surprise.

“Oh?”

“The way you found a way around everything I threw at you when we fought,” he clarifies as he reaches across to put his silver general in a new position. “I should have figured you were a natural strategist.”

Tayuya isn’t sure what to say to that; she’s never really thought of herself as a strategist and it’s just such a bizarrely complimentary thing to hear from one’s enemy that it leaves her a bit tongue-tied. Thankfully his move is less difficult to react to...

She squints at the board then curses as she realizes what a shift he has created in the playfield.

“...Oh fuck you.”

Shikamaru smirks a little, but he doesn’t let himself smile completely until he actually wins. Tayuya wants to be angry but he’s so thoroughly outplayed her it’s a bit difficult to feel like he didn’t earn it. She gives him a sour look across the board but he only smiles benignly. 

“Rematch?” he asks, collecting the pieces.

She hesitates, but only for a moment. 

“Me first this time.”

-

That night, as she lies awake in the low light of her bed lamp, Tayuya realizes that she is looking forward to Shikamaru’s visit tomorrow...

After eating what she dares of the tray they charitably called her dinner she pulls out the notebook from its place alongside the mattress and finds herself thinking ‘what might he bring her tomorrow afternoon?’ and ‘how can she adjust her shogi strategy to make sure he doesn’t win so many fucking times again?’. The realization hits her like a rock square in the stomach.

Fuck. He’s getting to her. 

If she lets herself really think about it, it’s been downright pleasant to have his company the last few days, when he hasn’t been bothered to question her. It’s almost like having a friend visit, him showing up with a challenge and a smile to distract her from the ache of her slow recovery and the strange liminal space she occupies here. 

But she knows that there must be a point to it all, that he can’t enjoy the shogi or her company nearly enough to keep doing this for no gain. That she has not yet figured out what precisely that gain is both worries and infuriates her. He’s trying to get SOMETHING from her that isn’t her information but she really isn’t sure what. 

The thought keeps her up for more than a while.

-

On day nine she is scribbling horns onto the rabbit on the cover of her notebook when he arrives, the spiral pad propped on a pillow over her newly bent knees. The process of bending and relocking her lower joints in fresh traction this morning had been fucking excruciating, to put it mildly, and the low thrum of pain that remains, along with the medication cocktail keeping it low, has left her little appetite for an already unappealing lunch.

Shikamaru gives her ignored sandwich and gone-warm carton of milk a look of vague concern as he sets them aside to make room for the Shogi board on her tray. 

“Not hungry today?” he asks while pulling over his chair. As if he actually cares if she eats or not...

“Not for that crap.” she fires back, wrinkling her nose. She lays the notebook aside. "It’s your go first.”

“Right.” He nods at the reminder, falling into his usual thinking posture as he considers how to open the board. “So, what do you like?”

“What?”

“To eat. I’m back here every night bringing Chouji a second dinner. He hates the hospital menu too, and they don’t give him enough.” Shikamaru explains, sliding a pawn forward. “I can bring you something too. What do you like?”

“And I’m gonna pay with what? Free gauze I stole from the dressing cart?” Tayuya snorts, moving her own pawn. When she looks up he's staring across at her like she’s sprouted a second head.

“I… knew that when I offered?” he says, confusion creasing his brow. “I’m not asking you to pay me, Tayuya.”

“Seriously?” Her tone is sharp, the exhaustion of second-guessing the intention of his every move bleeding into her voice more than a bit. 

“Why would I think you could pay me right now? I’m not worried about that.”

“Well I am!” she snaps, and he leans back from the board a little, startled. 

“What the hell IS it with you?!” She finally asks, throwing up her hands at him in a baffled gesture that sweeps him head to foot. “You ask me all these questions and when I don’t answer you just say ‘oh okay’ and bring me a game to play and some free food? What the fuck kind of interrogation is this supposed to be? Are you trying to bury me in social debt hoping I’ll cave from the guilt of giving you nothing back? I didn’t _ask_ for all your ‘help’!” 

“I’m trying to give you some reasons to _trust_ me, so you’ll _want_ to talk to me!” Shikamaru tells her, with a look so honest and guileless it makes her want to punch him right in his stupid face.

“You’d have better luck getting something out of me by re-breaking my legs,” she snarls, and at that Shikamaru sits up straighter, squaring his shoulders and pinning her with a hard look that takes her a little aback. 

“Torturing barely chunnin-age ninja when they come to us already half-dead isn’t the kind of thing we DO in this village,” he says, his voice stern. “If that’s what you’re expecting you’re not going to get it, sure as hell not from me.”

Tayuya tries for a response, her mouth opens, but she can’t muster a word before he barrels onward, apparently bolstered by having spoken his piece about her expectations and ready to move on to his unfounded opinions about the rest of her next.

“You’re no idiot, and you’re clearly a tremendously skilled kunoichi.” He says it like it’s an accusation. “You should have a long life ahead of you. You deserve better choices for that life than just dying where you’re left or spending the rest of your days trailing after that snake creep like he’s half-a-god because he gave you an ugly tattoo.”

Fury boils up in her belly and Tayuya sits up straighter in bed, closing all the distance between them that she’s capable of without actually trying to get to her feet. 

“You don’t know the first fucking thing about what he gave me!” she snarls. “He-”

“Look at yourself right now! He didn’t give you ANYTHING!” Shikamaru interrupts her, anger heating his face as he rises out of his chair, planting his hands on her table tray. Those deep brown eyes pin her like an insect. 

“He’s a self-centred scheming old bastard who betrayed his village for power. He used _you_ for your power, just like he used your teammates, just like he wants to use Sasuke. He uses people up until they’re husks and then he leaves them behind just like a snake outgrowing its skin.”

Tayuya clenches tight fists under the table tray, her hands shaking in her lap, cursing the painful prick deep in her chest where his words have struck like an arrow...

She draws a seething breath and remembers Lord Orochimaru’s firm reassuring hands on her shoulders. ( _She remembers his hard bite at the back of her neck as she had stood lightheaded and shaking in the summoning circle, him hissing in her ear to lock her knees and not give up so easy while fire had flooded through her veins until she screamed…_ ) 

“He gave us a home and a purpose!” She hisses. “He made us strong!” 

“Strong enough for four out of five of you to die on an escort mission?” Shikamaru snaps at her. “A home that hasn’t even _tried_ to claim you in all the days you’ve been here?”

Tayuya sees red. 

Shogi tiles spray across the room as she seizes the board and whips the folded wood at his face as hard as she possibly can. 

He blocks it from hitting him in the throat but it still cracks with satisfying force off his cheekbone and makes him stagger back before clattering to the floor. 

**_“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET OUT!”_ ** She roars, half-ready to leap from her bed and strangle him, a possibility he apparently takes seriously as he slides another step back from her. He meets her eyes for barely a second before wheeling away from her, snatching the board from the floor, and storming out. 

He stomps into the hall, the door slams behind him, and Tayuya shoves the tray table back so hard it cracks off of the wall and falls over. It isn’t nearly as satisfying as she wants it to be. Neither is yelling at the charge nurse that comes to investigate the noise or ripping the drawer out of her side-table and pitching it into the reinforced window. The glass barely cracks.

The book is the only thing left she can reach that she isn’t physically attached to.

Ripping all the pages off of the wire spine finally does a little bit of something to the screaming pain in the pit of her chest, takes the edge off the feeling of panic that has left her lightheaded and panting, aching to just _run_ until she collapses. She shreds the back and most of the cover before the weariness starts to creep over her, the adrenaline crash that comes after exertion and anger dragging her steadily down. 

She casts the heap of paper off her lap and folds in on herself, curling up around her anchored knees and burying her face in her arms. 

Crying doesn’t count as long as no one sees her.

-

Tayuya sleeps for the rest of the day, but not deeply. 

She is still vaguely aware of what is going on around her, of the orderly that rights her table and drawer, of being given her medicine and having her small table lamp turned on by the nurse. It is getting dark outside, the bustle of the evening shift-change humming in the hall, when she finds the energy to be fully awake. 

Her dinner was brought an hour ago and has been left ignored on the tray. She is thinking about sitting up to see if any of it is still edible when she feels it - the shift in the atmosphere as someone else enters the room.

She tenses, squinting into the shadows. She knows he's there, but her eyes can’t find him until he tilts his head and the blank, fearsome reflection of his glasses outlines his face in the corner of the room. 

Tayuya's heart lurches in her chest, relief bubbling up in her belly.

“Fucking hell, Kabuto,” she hisses. “Can you be any more creepy? It took you long enough to show up, you asshole.”

He makes a shushing motion as he comes to stand beside her.

“Now now, these sorts of things are sensitive, Tayuya.” He whispers, pausing to look over the rigging around her bed. He curls his lip at the bags on her IV pole, then he reaches down and plucks at one of the chakra strings binding her left leg like it’s a harp. She bites back a groan as the sensation sends a wave of nausea over her. 

“Hey don’t fucking DO that...” she hisses, swatting at his arm as she levers herself up to sitting. 

“You’re always so stubborn, Tayuya.” Kabuto tuts as he places a knee on the edge of her bed and leans over her. “Couldn’t you have saved me such an annoying trip and just died?”

His hand is on her mouth before she can process the words completely. He slams her head down to the mattress, pressing hard and pinching her nose shut. His other hand reaches over to flip off her monitors, casually silencing each alarm that flares up as she struggles and her vitals spike.

Her body floods with fire - oxygen deprivation, adrenaline, terror, rage...

Tayuya seizes his arm at first but he has too much leverage for her to make him budge, so she wrenches her head in his grip instead, angling her chin up to try to catch a breath. He clearly isn't expecting her to have quite so much strength left and tries to reinforce his hold by pinning her chest with the other hand but his fingers slip from pinching her nose and that is enough.  
  
Tayuya sucks a breath, arches her body back until her upper jaw slips loose, and bites down on the web of his thumb and palm as hard as she possibly can, digging in until she tastes blood.

Kabuto snarls in pain but doesn’t let go, gripping her chin roughly as he fumbles to pull a weapon from his belt. Tayuya beats him to the strike, her hand scrabbling on the side table until she finds one of the pencils. Her aim isn’t true enough to drive it right into his ear, but she’s sure it punctures _something_ from the way he yells and weaves to one side.

Tayuya gasps a full breath and pushes herself upright again, reeling her arm back to take another swipe at him with her improvised weapon, but he lunges at her and gets both hands on her throat. 

Instinct drives her to use his momentum and push him over her and off the side of the bed.

It goes just as badly and painfully as she knows it will.

He hauls her down with him, because of course he does the motherfucker, and they both crash to the floor in a tumble. She's on top of him for a moment, but winded and reeling from the pain of having all her traction strings snapped in a violent cascade.

Kabuto quickly takes the upper hand, flipping her on her back and sitting across her fragile hips, smothering her scream by clapping his bloodied hand over her mouth again. 

“You little bitch…” he pants. “Why do you make everything so difficult?"

Tayuya bucks and strikes at him, but can't break his grip this time. Still, she lands a slap that causes him to pin down her dominant hand, leaving an opening for her to claw off his glasses with the other and smash them into his face with all her fading strength. The lenses shatter, slicing her palm nearly as badly as his face, but she pushes harder, praying to fuck knows what gods that she's blinded him.

He shouts in anger, pulls her forward by her jaw, and smashes her back down on the floor.

Pain explodes through the back of her head and Tayuya howls into his hand, feeling panic grip her as he sinks his weight onto her belly, pressing the last scraps of air from her lungs. Her vision swims but even dizzy and in agony she can feel the blade he puts against her throat, the edge digging in sharply for just a moment. She can’t breathe, she can’t move...

Then there’s a clatter somewhere in her periphery and Kabuto freezes.

He glares at her with a palpable fury, blood drips from his massacred eye and the bridge of his nose onto her cheek, but his hands release her and rise slowly into the air as if in surrender.  
  
Tayuya knows logically that she should sit up, strike again, brace herself for more; her mind is screaming at her to do it, but her body will not obey. She can only gasp, her arms lay limp at her sides, heart hammering in her chest. 

Her head falls toward the light that she now realises is pouring in from the hall and she sees Shikamaru standing, hands raised, in the doorway. 

He’s saying something as he folds his arms behind his head, he looks furious, but her ears are ringing too loudly for her to make sense of the syllables. A bag of snacks is spilt at his feet, quickly trampled by the stream of hospital and security staff that come flanking him through the door.  
  
Tayuya sucks a guttering breath as she watches two shinobi collect Kabuto from the grip of the shadow possession, the pain and shock of it all washing over her in a crippling wave.

_He came for me…. He came for me…. He came to finish me…_

“Tayuya?” 

She blinks away a blur of tears and Shikamaru’s face appears above her own, haloed by the too-bright ceiling lights. He gathers her bloodied hand in both of his, squeezes her wrist reassuringly. 

“You’re okay, we’ve got you. Don’t move.” 

She’s not okay. She doesn’t know if she’s ever going to be okay again...

Shikamaru keeps hold of her hand as three medic-nin work in hurried concert around her, replacing her IV and untangling the mess of her legs. They crank up her pain medicine until the world recedes into a dim reflection of itself, time stretching out like taffy as they gather her back onto the bed and begin to re-attach all that’s been torn loose.

She watches in numb silence, feeling far away, as Shikamaru - _why him? what is he still doing here?_ \- pulls the shards of glass from her palm and holds her arm still for the medic-nin to close and dress her wounds.

Slowly the work around her calms and people begin to disperse, and as the quiet falls her reserves at last run empty. Tayuya cannot keep her eyes open no matter how hard she tries. 

Shikamaru’s hand is still in hers when she falls asleep.

-

Day ten dawns bright and cold and empty and Tayuya is alone.

She wants desperately to believe the night before to be a vivid nightmare, but the dull pain throbbing through her whole body and her left hand lying bandaged in her lap are proof enough. Although part of her wants to cry and her eyes burn, she feels all out of tears, bitter anger bubbling up from beneath the vast sadness of it all. 

She drags her head up from the pillow just after the sun is up, pulls the crinkled stack of papers that’s left of her notebook off the side-table, and starts to write.

She fills up ten sheets with answers to everything Shikamaru has asked her and several things he hasn’t. Details, names, locations, maps, spilling out every scrap of information she can think of until her fingers cramp and the pencil lead is fat and blunted.

Putting it all on paper is still easier by far than saying it all out loud would be.

She doesn’t intend to talk to Shikamaru when he comes in later that morning. She doesn’t even know how to look him in the face. 

He was right and she already knows it. The last thing she needs is to see it written all over his smug smile too.

When she hears the door open Tayuya reaches behind her to shove the book toward him across the tray, then burrows deeper under the blankets and returns to being a silent heap on the bed. 

He stands quietly for a moment before she hears him step forward and pick it up, followed by the rustle of him leafing through the pages. But then instead of retreating, he comes around to the side of the bed she is facing. Goddamn him it took her twenty minutes and a nurse’s help to achieve lying on her side like this in the first place; the whole POINT was to not have to see him!

She curls up as tightly as she can and buries her face beneath the blanket up to her forehead.

“Tayuya…”

“Just take it and go.” she says hoarsely as his shadow falls over the sheet. “I told you everything you wanted to know.”

“...you didn't write down what you like to eat."

His voice sounds strained, almost pleading, and between that and her surprise at his question, it is enough for her to peek above the edge of the blanket with her red-rimmed eyes.  
  
Shikamaru looks back at her with shadowed sleepless ones, crouched beside the bed. He holds his fingers in that thoughtful pose of his but presses them together anxiously, so hard the tips turn white. The whole of it is too much and she looks down at his feet, trying to muster herself to tell him to leave, that she’s not hungry…

“I’m sorry for what I said to you yesterday.” 

Her eyes snap up to his again; full of that sincerity so stark it almost hurts to look at.

"I shouldn't have-” he hesitates, starts over again. “I knew I was hitting below the belt when I said that about your teammates and your home and I'm sorry." 

Tayuya gives a raw laugh, looking away again as she stubbornly blinks back tears.

"Why should you be sorry for being right?"

"Because I told you I wasn't going to hurt you and then I turned around and did just that." He murmurs, and Tayuya feels something wrench in the pit of her chest. "Just because something is true doesn’t mean it’s decent or kind of me to point it out, especially not when I was trying to get you to trust me.”

He probably _is_ the most trustworthy person in her life right now, Tayuya thinks bitterly, and she burrows lower into her blanket nest again, swallowing against the lump in her throat.

“...I just want to go back to sleep, Shikamaru,” she mumbles, avoiding his gaze again.

He lets out a sigh.

“Alright, yeah. You should rest, you had a long night,” he says gently, but he moves like molasses as he rises to his feet and gathers the shredded book. He pauses by her tray.  
  
“I’m coming back around dinnertime with stuff for Chouji though so, maybe I’ll look in on you? Okay?”

Goddamn him, what a stubborn bastard. Tayuya hates his persistence. 

She hates even more how much she really does want to see him again...

“...Rice,” she says quietly, pulling the blanket tighter. “The sticky kind.”

He sounds relieved when he says. “Of course.”

-

When he returns at dinnertime Tayuya is weaving three thin plaits into one larger one over her shoulder. Half her hair is braided but it hasn’t helped her sleep much over the day. It takes her a long moment or two - until he has pulled over his chair and set a knotted yellow lunch bag on her tray - before she can bring herself to look up at him.  
  
It’s the first time she really looks at his face for long enough in the daylight to realize how bruised he is where she cracked him with the shogi board. There’s a stripe of violet from his jaw to his temple on the right, but he’s smiling calmly as he nudges the bag toward her on the tray.

“Rice. The sticky kind,” he promises, as she reaches out to take it.

“I’ll owe you later.” she insists stubbornly, pulling the bundle closer to unwrap it. 

Inside is a sizable lunch box, warm to the touch, with a clear lid. Through the steam gathered on the inside of the glass she can see it is crammed full with sticky rice and sauce-covered eel and several onigiris. Her stomach grumbles in anticipation. (Fuck! How did he know she liked eel? Did he just guess?!)

“Shit. You did good, Nara,” she mutters, looking at him out the corner of her eye, and Shikamaru laughs a bit.

“I’m glad. Here, there’s this too.”

Tayuya looks up to see what else he places on the tray, unprepared for the sight of a polished wooden flute. 

“Oh…” 

She feels like she’s been kicked right in the heart for a second, tears welling up despite how desperately she does _not_ want to cry in front of him. Her jaw quivers anyway as she picks it up, pulling the instrument tight against her chest. 

“You brought me a wood one?” she complains to keep from thanking him too profusely, stubbornly scrubbing the dampness from her eyes with the heel of her free hand.

“What's wrong with wood?” he asks with a scoffing noise, but he doesn’t sound particularly affronted, his soft smile plainly recognizing her unspoken appreciation.

“The register's usually too low,” Tayuya explains, as she examines the instrument. It’s a simple six-hole hardwood affair, the kind she had learned with as a girl, just more solidly made. She doesn’t want to think about what he must have paid for it.  
  
“Wood doesn't unsettle people in battle like a good metallic sound.”

“Yeah, well, you won’t be battling for a while yet, and it's what I could get a hold of on short notice,” Shikamaru replies with a smirk. “At least try it before you complain so much, huh?”

Tayuya lifts the flute to her lips and a calm that she has longed for for ten miserable days floods through her at the first low whistling note. She takes it through a scale, then a favourite tune, testing the balance of it in her fingers and feeling out the way it plays. 

It’s not like her old one at all, far softer and more lilting, but it’s a nice sound in a different way. It has the mellow pitch of good wood, of something warm and solid and sure.

“So?” Shikamaru asks when she lowers it again.

Tayuya grips the flute tightly, blinking back the grateful tears that blur her eyes. 

“It’ll do.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've gotten this far, wow thank you for reading this! This fic is a reworking of a series of drabbles that I posted on LiveJournal way the hell back in 2006 and it is pretty much just my self-indulgent experiment with my favourite characters so if even one other person enjoys this, huzzah!
> 
> I blame Raendown for giving me a reason to care about this fandom again, which caused me to re-read my old stuff and get the 'I still like bits of this but I can do better' itch. Fingers crossed I can stick with something as long-form as this is intended to be. It won't be a novel but it won't be short either. Gonna be a few parts of establishing connections before things start coming together so buckle up for a slow build. Thanks for giving this a read and have a great day!


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